Monday, April 20, 2009

DOCTORS SAY- DON'T RETIRE! and LIVE TO 100!



It's one thing for me to say to people, don't retire, but it's a whole other thing when doctors and medical research supports my belief! Deborah Kotz of USNews, recently wrote an article, entitled: 10 Health Habits That Will Help You Live to 100. I've included a few pertinent paragraphs below.

The biggest factor that determines how well you age is not your genes but how well you live. Not convinced? A new study published in the British Medical Journal of 20,000 British folks shows that you can cut your risk of having a stroke in half by doing the following four things: being active for 30 minutes a day, eating five daily servings of fruit and vegetables, and avoiding cigarettes and excess alcohol.

While those are some of the obvious steps you can take to age well, researchers have discovered that centenarians tend to share certain traits in how they eat, move about, and deal with stress—the sorts of things we can emulate to improve our own aging process. Of course, getting to age 100 is enormously more likely if your parents did. Still, Thomas Perls, who studies the century-plus set at Boston University School of Medicine, believes that assuming you've sidestepped genes for truly fatal diseases like Huntington's, "there's nothing stopping you from living independently well into your 90s." Heck, if your parents and grandparents were heavy smokers, they might have died prematurely without ever reaching their true potential lifespan, so go ahead and shoot for those triple digits by following these 10 habits:

1. Don't retire. "Evidence shows that in societies where people stop working abruptly, the incidence of obesity and chronic disease skyrockets after retirement," says Luigi Ferrucci, director of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. The Chianti region of Italy, which has a high percentage of centenarians, has a different take on leisure time. "After people retire from their jobs, they spend most of the day working on their little farm, cultivating grapes or vegetables," he says. "They're never really inactive." Farming isn't for you? Volunteer as a docent at your local art museum or join the Experience Corps, a program offered in 19 cities that places senior volunteers in urban public elementary schools for about 15 hours a week.

Now do you belive me when I tell you take the time to read Don't Retire, REWIRE! You won't be sorry!





JOB SITES FOR MATURE WORKERS


I did a program this weekend in West Bloomfield, Michigan entitled: PRIME TIME OVER 50 sponsored by Jewish Vocational Services of Detroit. http://www.jvsdet.org/. JVS does outstanding work for a wide variety of constituents and employs some of the most compassionate, caring people that I have ever had the opoporutnity to work with!

The audience was comprised of several hundred energetic people who were all in some type of work transition. I gave them what I call one of my Meat and Motivation presentations which included the following job sites. I think they're some of the best and wanted to share them with you. I hope you find them helpful:

And one that is very comprehensive and chocked full of info is http://www.seniorjobbank.org/!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

JERI REWIRES BY PLAYING POKER!


I decided to rewire some of my fun a few weeks ago and took a poker class!
I needed to add something active, not passive to my life, and a lunch n' learn event on poker sounded great. Not only did I learn to play, but I won! Check me out at

http://www.pokerdivas.com/category/news-and-events

Playing poker fulfilled many of my personal "drivers." Those 85 motivators that we identified in DON'T RETIRE, REWIRE! My drivers include having a need to have new and different experiences and to be current. I realized that today's challenges were zapping me of my energy and positive spirit and that I was yearning to do something new! So off to a PokerDivas class I went! It was everything I wanted and MORE !

Are you in a rut? Feeling like you want to get away, but can't? Ask yourself if you are getting enough "driver" fulfillment? And if the answer is no, then take the time today to see what you can add to your life! Make the time to Rewire! Your future fun is waiting!